Mises’s Planning for Freedom (Selections)

Planning for Freedom – interventionists claim that their version of economic planning is radically different from the socialists’ as well as the capitalists’. They claim to be able to achieve a best of both worlds. However, interventionism tends to create results that are counter to the stated intent. For example, minimum wage, rather than lifting all workers (and especially the least fortunate) tend to lift some workers’ wages while disemploying others entirely. Similarly, high union wages tend to end up suppressing nonunion wages. If we want to help everyone, we should allow for a maximum of freedom, which will encourage entrepreneurs to produce what consumers want and to do so as productively as possible (raising wages).

Middle of the Road Policy Leads to Socialism – Following from the previous chapter, the middle of the road policy tends to be a road to socialism (that is, full government control of the economy). Consider a price control on milk – which is intended to make milk more affordable and available to the lower classes. However, the price ceiling will lead some farmers to produce less milk – instead they’ll produce things like butter or cheese which are not price controlled. So, milk may be cheaper, but it is less available than before. To offset this, the government would have to place price controls on the inputs (and perhaps the other goods that milk producers would be tempted to switch to), so that it is profitable to produce milk even at the lower price. This would simply lead to fewer of those inputs being made available – leading to yet more price controls being needed. In the end, the government would have to take over control of all production in order to meet its goal of providing more, affordable milk – just as in full socialism. This path is not mere conjecture – it was largely along this path that the British economy became socialist through World War 2, and that the German economy became socialist (of the Nazi variety) in the lead up to World War 2. The march toward socialism is, however, reversible, if the people adopt an ideology that is not simply anti-communist and anti-socialist, but is a positive endorsement of the market system that has led to the prosperity we have.